Guest Blog: Mat Oxley: An unforgettable duel

MotoMatters.com is delighted to feature the work of iconic MotoGP writer Mat Oxley. Oxley is a former racer, TT winner and highly respected author of biographies of world champions Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi, and currently writes for Motor Sport Magazine, where he is MotoGP correspondent. We will be featuring sections of Oxley's blogs, posted in full on the Motor Sport Magazine website, over the coming months.

The New Year is usually a time to look forward. But the past is an easier place to talk about than the future, so please forgive me for looking backward as I struggle into 2013, having rather overdone it on too many occasions during the past week or so.

This year it’s 20 years since one of the most thrilling, weird and anguished battles for the premier-class World Championship. The 1993 duel between Americans Kevin Schwantz and Wayne Rainey will never be forgotten, and not only for good reasons.

Schwantz versus Rainey will always be one of ‘bike racing’s all-time greatest rivalries – much more real and much nastier than anything we’ve had in MotoGP. The pair hated each other from the moment their career paths collided in US Superbikes in 1986.

“I don’t know why I disliked him,” says Schwantz. “Except that I knew how much he disliked me, so I figured I’d dislike him just as much.”

Comments

I remember reading that Rainey motivated himself by having to beat anyone who presented a threat at anything from tiddlywinks to table tennis, and even within his own team he would try to turn his team mates guys against their man to undermine him.
Probably not a very nice person really?

Alex Barros was punching a rider in the head while riding down the straight, during a race! Can you imagine the fallout today Lol. Judging from the reaction after the Stoner/De Puniet 'punch' during practice I reckon Barros might have been lynched.